Florida Men's Golf Travels to Statesboro for Schenkel Invitational
Thursday, March 17, 2011 | Men's Golf
The Florida Men's Golf team will travel to Statesboro, Ga. to compete in the Schenkel Invitational on Friday, March 18 through Sunday, March 20 in a 36-hole three-day tournament. The tournament, played at the par-72, 6,962-yard Forest Heights Country Club, features five teams in the Golfweek/Sagarin Top-25 rankings and six teams that participated in the 2010 NCAA Tournament.
The Gators will be making their 25th appearance in the tournament since 1971 and look to earn their fourth first-place finish in tournament history and first time since 2004. In 2010, UF finished in eighth place.
Sophomore Phillip Choi (Orlando, Fla.) will be playing in the No. 1 spot for the Gators and senior Bank Vongvanij (Bradenton, Fla.) will be playing in the No. 2 spot. Both golfers finished in a team-high tie for sixth at the Bandon Dunes Championship last weekend.
Redshirt-senior Andres Echavarria (Medellin, Colombia), sophomore Tyler McCumber (Ponte Vedra, Fla.) and Michael Furci (Sayville, N.Y.) will also play for the Gators.
The Schenkel Invitational, dubbed by Golf World as the “Collegiate Championship of the East,” features another championship-caliber field from across the country. The 2011 field includes Auburn, Florida, Georgia Southern, Kentucky, LSU, Minnesota, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Notre Dame, North Carolina, N.C. State, North Florida, Tennessee, Vanderbilt and Virginia.
Florida leads the field in the current Golfweek/Sargarin poll in fifth place. Auburn, the 2010 winner, ranks ninth with LSU in 12th place. Virginia and N.C. State round out the teams in the top 25, ranked 19th and 20th place, respectively. Georgia Southern, North Florida and Tennessee join Florida, Auburn and Virginia as participants in last year's NCAA Championship.
The Schenkel Invitational is named after Hall-of-Fame sports broadcaster Chris Schenkel. Schenkel, who was the first to cover The Masters on television, the first to anchor a live telecast of the Olympics and to call a nationally broadcast college football game, helped lend his name to a tournament that has grown into one of the premier collegiate golf tournaments in the nation.
The lending of Schenkel's name and contacts helped the tournament get started and attract an elite field every year that stretches across the country. The tournament has attracted 67 different schools from 25 states and the nation's capital. Current and past PGA pros David Toms, Scott Verplank, Hal Sutton, Jodie Mudd, Luke Donald and Bubba Watson have competed in the invitational.
Through the years, six teams and three players have won the tournament en route to capturing the NCAA team and individual titles. Florida (`73), Wake Forest (`74, `86) and Oklahoma State (`80, `83, `87) won both team titles. Curtis Strange and Gary Halberg, both from Wake Forest, won the tournament and NCAA Championship in 1974 and 1979, respectively. Matt Hill of N.C. State was the most recent golfer to accomplish the feat, winning both titles in 2009.
Thirty-one years of Schenkel competition has also produced four players who have gone on to win the U.S. Open. Jerry Pate (`76), Andy North (`78, `85), Curtis Strange (`88, `89) and Lucas Glover (`09) have all been crowned U.S. Open Champion.
Last year, both the team and individual medalist honors were won by one stroke. Auburn, trailing North Florida by seven strokes heading into the final round, won the tournament with a 2-under 862 tournament total. A three-man playoff determined the 2010 individual medalist. Jonathan Randolph of Ole Miss birdied the first playoff hole to win the title over Alabama's Hunter Hamrick and North Florida's Jordan Gibb.
Twelve of the 15 teams from the 2010 field are back again for the 2011 Schenkel Invitational. Georgia Southern, who has appeared in every tournament, joins six other schools, Auburn, Florida, LSU, Tennessee, N.C. State and North Carolina, who have been in the field every year since 2000. Kentucky makes its sixth-straight appearance with 11 total trips to the Schenkel while North Florida has participated annually in the tournament since its first appearance in 2008. The other three schools, Ole Miss, Vanderbilt and Virginia, have competed the last two years. Virginia returned to the Schenkel after a 10-year absence while Ole Miss appeared in the 2009 field for the first time since 1989. The year 2009 marked the first time Vanderbilt participated in the tournament.
Florida is scheduled to tee off at 10:30 p.m. and live scoring is available at www.golfstat.com. Fans may also follow the Schenkel Invitational at twitter.com/SchenkelInvite. Check www.GatorZone.com for updated news and results.
